h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*listening to Beastie Boys at 8-somethin in the morning*

"Mario C likes to keep it clean" Go white boy! It's your birthday!
*cheesy white person dance*

Had an odd dream that woke me up needing water..got up and mumbled..'water....water..', and stumbled to the kitchen. Now the journey was all of 12 feet, but christ, I've never been so wobbly in my life. Was like ooOOoo! Either I've started my next life as a foal already, or I'm dehydrated to some sick euphoric state...I *did* notice lovely exposure of veinwork when I was undressed in the bathroom earlier. Looks cool! I'm a green earth goddess! *cackles all the way to the grave*

Que mas..que mas.."So butterfly here is your song, and it's sealed with a kiss..." es at Njan....

Hmm...I just got a call from a creditor of Ray's...Invariably she asks what happened...Out comes my meek/blunt (is there such a thing?) 'he committed suicide.' I haven't got a call like that for many months. *listens to Bjork's "I've seen it all"..well, I though I have anyway *

I love you Ray.

~#Your love is thick and it swallowed me whole #~.. having gone through whatever thought processes caused me to want to paste that at you, I had a glance at the lyrics for the song. Strangely, some songs seem to have particular lines which jump out as being noteworthily meaningful, whilst others are simply unobtrusively nice most of the way through. Some songs have lyrics which seem either not to make sense at all, or are utterly inappropriate.. aside from one verse. All that grabs my attention, I tend to feel like copying down.. in this case, I moved swiftly off the line I originally decided that I'd type and onto another. And then noticed that I liked the line after that equally much. And the line after that. I swift decided that the best thing to do would in fact be to paste the entire song at you do. But if I did that, twould be but a pointless gesture, and I wouldn't really be saying anything personal at all. Suffice to say that the entirety of that song - and I suppose that this isn't really that surprising, since it was one of your chosen songs - is eminently quotable.

I suppose that it does make sense in the end. Alanis is, after all, god - and if she's god, her word must be gospel. Right? .. I think some of your angelicism must have rubbed off on me for my heart not to have exploded in my chest in hearing her voice. Perhaps I'm going too far with the dogma reference.

You've been gone for just a handful of hours, and I find myself pitifully wanting to whine that you've been gone for a lifetime. It's not something I want to do, because much like the futile gesture of covering you with song lyrics, it's a little of a cliché, which I suppose in one way would make my using of the phrase even more justified.. or it might just be taken as cliché anyway. Any way you wish to take it, my heart aches, and I'm unsure why - after all, only a few hours ago, I tried to negate the pangs of loneliness building in my mind by placating your own with a trite sentence or two in which I offered (or maintained offerance of) that which you put claim towards missing, telling you that it wouldn't go away and that therefore you had no reason to miss anything.

This is the point. There is no reason for lots of things, and that in some cases makes them all the more wonderful, whilst in others making them all the more unbearable. Our eternal friend (for anyone who commits so much of themself to time's cruel providence is, unless you find yourself greatly incensed against their writing, your eternal friend) comrade hume spoke this many hundreds of years again, and indubitably, people will continue to alight upon the same fact in a multiplicity of different fashions until the end of time or the ascension of humans to whichsoever next level of existence they may happen to find themselves on. The idea that humans as a collective whole may ascend, rather than descending, seems unlikely, and I'd probably rather put my money on the former. Nonetheless, things aren't logical is the idea, and I suppose I shouldn't try and argue my way around the phenomenal degree to which hearts seem to be able to turn on a sixpence and cause jubilance to turn to the bittersweet pangs of sorrow which I feel now. Ironic that without happiness and so many other positive feelings, they can't exist. The pangs, that is, not hearts. If only fate were so kind.

This brings me onto something consoling, I suppose: there's no way that even at my most paranoid, I can circumvent such killer logic. I must feel sorrow for a reason, and if the reason is the absence of something, then I can't negate the significance of the something.

And the something is really f**king significant.

At this point, one of the other tracks which I have on my hard drive as a result of you appears in the air. It seems to have just the right tone - U2 always had a pang of consigned sorrow to them (through everything else, I always felt that - don't ask me why. It may just be conditioning. My mother always listened to U2, and amongst the cloud of conflicting emotions surrounding her, perpetual sorrow beads the air like droplets of dew on a leaf).

How to explain this latest thought? I step back from what I've written and looked at the analogy I've just used. In a particularly sorrowful moment, with eyes full of tears which wet the surface below me, I wrote you a note which lamented my 'being unable to ever cling to you as the morning dew does to blades of grass, and look as beautiful in doing so'. After writing it, I felt so disgusted at having committed those thoughts to paper, and banished both the paper and thoughts to the bin, for so many reasons. Even the comparative eloquence of such a note seemed to disgust me, actions speaking louder than words, and this one being so blatantly self-evident that it seemed me not to merit explanation, such surfeit of expression cloying nastily.

I hated myself for even entertaining the thought that I could do such a thing to you as write the note. And then for contemplating not leaving you explanation. I detested myself for deigning to think that I should merit such significance to you that I would bear to think that I were so important as to warrant writing notes of excuse for a life badly lived, and I disdainfully wept my frustration at being unable to rationalise so much as the degree to which in all the shining brilliance of your presence in my life, I should wish to end it. In the end, the stark contrast of reality and thought came to the grating conclusion which caused me simply to curl up and weep yet more tears, rather than doing anything which might have merited a sombre official figure sifting through the balls of scrunched up notepaper in the bin under my sink. That was my final thought, at the time.

I don't think that you wanted to know any of that.

Plaintively, piano chords ring out behind bassline, drums, and vocals. Piano chords always struck a certain chord in my musical soul, for want of a better descriptor. Unintentionally clumsy phrasing is one of my hallmarks, I suppose. The chords seem to have the characteristic I assigned to what was soundtracking my thoughts earlier, and perhaps in this case, they have rather more of the timbre of which I was thinking. I did always believe in fairy tales, and I was always so alternately theistically sceptical and devoutly clinging.

To flit to yet another idea, this really is typical. Clinging to darkly sceptical is a very easy jump to make. Musically, such contrast provides such beauty. ("Tell the northern lights to keep shining" - the cadence is so beautiful. In case the first few confuse you, it's tori again.) Why is it that it's such a painfully confusing experience when it happens to me? Perhaps life truly does provide music of its own. But can music appreciate its own beauty? Or even chastise itself for being as egocentric as it thinks it's being now.

Bartok, perhaps, is my own brand of music. I always hated Bartok with a passion, I tell myself. I abhored the study of it, and reviled listening to it. Yet strangely, I took pride in understanding the music later. I never cease to surprise myself.

'here in my head' should probably be the title to this particular piece of disjointed prose which I've seen fit to engage my fingers with the expression of. It's really rather beautiful..

just keep
your eyes
on her
keep
don't
look

away

keep
your eyes on
her
horizon

..portions of lyric are clear, portions require interpretation, portions fascinate me now in deciphering. I think that it would probably be fascinating to see what commonality there would be between two peoples' interpretation of the same text.

I don't even know where I'm wandering now, but then, that's never stopped me from wandering before. Perhaps this is my clue that I should stop.

*sips water thoughtfully at 1:21 am in Boise, Idaho*

Having the option..I'll reply to you here. I hope that connotes the sentiment I wish it to. We only have so much control over our words after all. It's a dangerous, beautiful thing we do, trying to dredge out symbols for our much-confused thoughts. Words are a commitment. According to the Bible, where two are gathered in prayer, there God shall be. This symbolism reverberates to the heights of our cultural heirarchy in our wedding and induction ceremonies, in our courts - the declaration of mere collections of phonemes is elevating somehow, and a sort of spiritual cohesion occurs.

I hope if I ever marry again, that I can have the resolve and the bravery to say my words boldly for the masses to hear, while never breaking eye-contact with the object of what will hopefully at that point still be my idolatry, tears born of a thousand and one emotions notwithstanding.

I read an article a while ago called 'The Soundtracking of America.' While it is true that we are inundated with music of questionable quality and relevence all the time, I resented the author's argument that 'to soundtrack' is somehow a bad thing. Perhaps it *is* the mind of a disturbed person that will sing and cry as she drives when 'Never is a Promise' by Fiona Apple comes one, even more so if she relishes it, risks her life a bit for it. However I would rather have the mark of insanity upon me than embitterment in old age, having had no marks at all, a life unfelt.

To communicate one's insanity is an even braver proposition. And to do so with bits of others' art - vocal music being even more complicated because it is a mixed media - is an exercise in trust. You never preface a quote with, "I want you to sense this," or "listen to the melody just now." The prerequisite to such sharing is a rare combination of open-heartedness and faith. Regardless of how you were made to feel, I feel that Clocks, for example, must have at least radiated to you a little of what I meant by it; the lyrics communicate to me that necessary ambiguity in love, nevertheless - the song sounds like one that I would play were I flying. And therefore, the message is that I err on the side of life, love, the pursuit, whatever. Perhaps this is too much to ask of our little game, but I think not. To quote Robert Frost "It asks a little of us here, it asks of us a certain height." And yet..rather than choose something *like* a star, I *will* choose you, my shining . We have love in unending supply; all that is required of us is faith.

On to your fullness of heart...oh it is awful to feel like you've been left with nothing better than cliches and triteness, as though you're to paint a Dali with nothing more than fingerpaint. Between the extremes of silence and banality, there is little guidance. How can you anticipate my reaction sufficiently to write a thing, much less actually experience how my heart feels upon its receipt, to know that you've hit the mark. That requires for *me* then to attempt to communicate it back. Fatalistic as we may be, and as tempting as it may be to see the whole process as one of diminishing returns, I believe we should learn to appreciate rather the exchange of energy, our ever ascending double-helix, to overuse a metaphor...as to your logic, I hope that in time the jubilation at the presence of the signified will further edify your argument.

I sometimes think that fascination must be the most potent human emotion. Other times I feel it must be that complex of emotions that includes fear, guilt, and unworthiness. But this is the nature of existence, is it not? A child reaches out with wide eyes to a glowing candle, and quickly retreats. Lovers rock into each other's bodies and away from eachother, again and again until they reach coitus. The universe expands and contracts....I don't think the universe is noncommittal so much as it creates friction. In the human life, the absense of friction is the absense of anything even remotely inspiring.

We are all unworthy. But would you still turn away the gift that has been offered? You conceivably have years to create for yourself rituals of penance with which to smooth over your perceived iniquity. And be assured that the other party will be doing the same.

I argue again that to me every movement of the arm, every twitch of the eye is as much art at anything else. Thought is art as well, and therefore we are uniquely inbued with the ability to see the art in each other, and, perhaps, even within ourselves. Perhaps that is what separates the 'quick' - we can regard each other.

...that is beautiful. And I don't know about commonality in interpretation but here is my response: such a tension. If you are both looking at the horizon of the other, indeed if you are both looking into each other's eyes, you are not looking at the same place. There should not be one submissive party, so this is the right way. I suppose this is where you have faith in the other person to fill in the gaps where necessary, and in yourself to paint the picture adequately. Have you ever played that game where you draw on your partners back with your finger, and have them guess what it was? I've found that rarely was the guesser correct, but what a divine feeling nevertheless to have the tender attention of the person you love. And as to imagery, I see two people on a high place, locked in an embrace, 360 degrees of possibility expanding around them.

Two last things - you would be wrong to assume that I don't want to hear it, all of it. And I too believe in fairy tales. Your otherworldliness defies the logic of our middle earth.